Dungen

Cat's Cradle, Carrboro, NC: 20 September 2005

This just in: Pitchfork implicated in closet-hippie shocka? It's no secret that we love Dungen, and even if it's not obvious from Ta Det Lugnt, the Swedish psych-rockers' literally awesome live show reveals them as what they essentially are-- a freaking jam band. Reputable studies of concert demographics have shown that the number of hemp necklaces in an audience is directly proportional to the number of extra bars appended to album tracks onstage, but Dungen corrupted the data by packing the Cat's Cradle with girls in boy shirts and boys in girl jeans instead.

The stage looked wonderful, at once inviting and commanding: Three long, crimped, and shaggy coiffures shook like dandelions in a breeze. Gustav Ejstes tangoed with his tambourine, clasped in dangerously tight clothes: A jumble of acute angles revolving nervously under thin fabric. Glass tubes glowed a comforting orange, like nightlights, in the exposed innards of a huge analog synthesizer with two maracas poised upon it like exotic fruit. Dungen opened the show with the crowd-pleasers "Gjort Bort Sig" and "Panda", playing them close to the hip-- no indication of the protracted incandescence that was to come.

A set's third song is a weird place for a 15-minute jam, but that's just what Dungen did with the churning "Sjutton". Ejstes inaugurated it with that mesmeric flute line; Reine Fiske muttered a sardonic "puss puss" (Swedish for "kiss kiss") as if he knew the American audience wasn't prepared for the melee that was about to ensue, and it wasn't until a few minutes past the track's normal run time that it clicked home: That's what these songs were made for. Dungen guided "Sjutton" through stormy violence and pastoral lulls, winding it down only to whip it back into a frenzy; a snake orgy of shifting intensities and dueling dynamics. It started to feel like a jazz show, with the smatterings of polite applause during the quiet passages, until Ejstes finally put it to bed with that same unassuming flute. During the next song, "Festival", the old dudes in the can talked Zeppelin and Cream, and at least three people came up to me marveling at the band's earnestness.

By the end of the show, I could no longer resist the urge to show off my limited Swedish to Dungen. I was standing right beside the stage, after all, so why not have a chat? In the quiet before the last song, I yelled my only Swedish phrase: "Din jŠvla apa!" Dungen gasped, murmuring the phrase to each other as if to confirm what they'd heard, and turned to me. "Do you know what that means?" Ejstes asked sternly. "Yes," I said, "unfortunately, I do." "You fucking monkey," marveled Ejstes, translating for the curious crowd, now howling. Dungen proceeded to jam extendo on a song I was too soused to place, letting it peter out so far that the audience began to clap as if it were over. "They'll bring it back", my friend Tony told me suavely, arms crossed, and sure enough, they brought it back, although no amount of clamor could draw them back for an encore. I hope that wasn't my fault. Puss puss, Dungen."